Virtualization technology enables physical resources to be shared by multiple virtual devices. As one example of such technology, multiple virtual stations or other virtual adapters may be associated with an underlying network adapter (i.e., a network interface card or a network controller). These multiple virtual adapters may provide network connectivity or access to a communications medium via the underlying network adapter's physical resources such as buffers, wireless radio(s), other kind of transceiver(s), and/or antenna(s). For example, virtual adapters may provide this connectivity or access to applications such as user-mode programs, kernel-mode processes, virtual machines, or the like.
In these and other scenarios, multiple applications or multiple virtual adapters may contend for the same resources (e.g., the resources associated with the underlying network adapter). Such contention may result in connectivity problems (e.g., slow data rates, dropped connections, difficulty in establishing connections, etc.). In addition, such contention may lead to inefficient usage of the resources associated with the underlying network adapter.